I lay still, eyeing Jesus across the room, ignoring the urgent need for goat milk, listening to his voice rise and fall, the quiet song of it. Somehow in my privileged ignorance it hadn’t occurred to me that I would be given an equal share of the chores. The thought was faintly alarming—I’d arrived here unskilled at every conceivable task assigned to women.
Jesus faced the window, his back to me. When he lifted his palms, I glimpsed his arms ripple beneath his tunic. The sight summoned forth the memory of last night, moments so innermost and beautiful, they caused an exquisite ache inside me. I let out an involuntary moan, and he finished his prayer and came to sit on the mat beside me.
He said, “Do you always sleep so late?”
I propped on my elbow, tilting my face to his, and tried to look both coy and innocent. “It’s not my fault. I was kept awake last night.”
His laughter rebounded from the walls to the ceiling, then out through the little window. Pushing the mass and tangle of hair from my face, he drew me against his chest. “Ana, Ana, you have awakened me and made me alive.”
“And you have done the same to me,” I said. “I have only one fear in being here.”
He cocked his head. “And what is that?”
“I have no idea how to milk a goat.”
He laughed his uproarious laugh once more and pulled me to my feet. “Get dressed and I will show you. The first thing you must learn is that this is a very particular goat. She only eats winter figs, almond blossoms, and barley cakes, and insists on being fed by hand and having her ears scratched . . .”
He carried on like this while I slipped a tunic over my undergarment and tied a scarf around my head, giggling at him under my breath. He was still traveling to Sepphoris to work on the theater and it seemed he should’ve been on his way by now, but he appeared to be in no hurry.
“Wait,” I said as he started toward the door. Opening my chest, I retrieved a small pouch, from which I pulled the red thread. “Can you guess where I acquired this?”
His brow wrinkled.
“It fell from your sleeve the day we met in the market,” I said.
“And you kept it?”
“I did, and I shall wear it every day while you’re away.” I held out my arm. “Tie it on for me.”
As he wrapped it about my wrist, he returned to his teasing. “Am I so faint in your thoughts that when I’m away you need this reminder?”
“Without this thread, I would forget I had a husband altogether.”
“Then keep it close,” he said and kissed my cheeks.
We found Judith in the stable. The goat was standing defiantly in the water trough, daring the sheep to drink. She was a dainty creature with a white body, a black face, a white beard, and wide-spaced eyes, one of which rotated in and the other out. I thought her outrageously funny-looking.
“She is a menace!” Judith said.
“I find her endearing,” I replied.
My sister-in-law made a derisive noise. “Then you won’t mind inheriting her care.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “But I need instruction.”
Sighing, she looked at Jesus as if they might commiserate together over my stupidity.
He took my hand, letting his thumb rub against the thread. “I should go. As it is, I’ll have to walk at a quick pace so as not to be late.”
“Your mother has packed your meal,” Judith told him, glancing accusingly at me, and I realized that task, too, belonged to me. I’d never cooked anything but ink.
When he left us, Judith lifted the goat from the water trough, provoking kicks, bleats, and a splatter of water, and dropped her roughly onto the ground. I watched as the animal lowered her head and butted Judith’s thigh.